Tuesday 25 June 2013

There’s nothing wrong with negative thinking!

Why
on earth do we expect our brains to work perfectly? If you bang your
knee on the corner of the bed it hurts like hell, swells up and a few
days later a bruise spreads out. Your body responds
to trauma, repetitive work and strange sudden movements.

When
you’re reaching over all the junk in the cupboard under the stairs,
trying to grab the hoover at the back, you’re not shocked when a pain
shoots up your back (who is this ‘you’ guy?

He sounds
like a complete idiot!) You know that your body has its limits; when
you push past them, there are anatomical mechanisms like synapses that
tell you you’re doing something stupid.

So
why do we imagine that our brains are different? For some reason we
expect our brains to be perfect. We believe our brains will survive the
horrors that each has to absorb: the vile images and
cruel injustices that everyone experiences, in their own individual
way.

Anything
construed crassly as ‘bad’ has to go. All good. It has to be all good,
happy, positive, lovely-dovely stuff. Out with that bad negative
thought. You don’t want that dreary darkness dragging
you down, oh no. You’re in control of your brain, and you’re saying it
all has to be good.

Get
yourself a dose of Mindfulness. Be aware of who you are right now and
appreciate your life as it happens. Fight the fear and pack a parachute.
Load up your quiver with a fistful of Cognitive
Behavioural Therapy (CBT) arrows and let those babies fly as soon as
you feel the slightest bit of anxiety bubbling up from your soul’s
abyss.

Or not.

Maybe
we’re trying to cure something that isn’t unwell. If it ain’t broke,
don’t spend your children’s inheritance at the psychotherapist and the
rest of your life on SSRIs that you don’t need.

This
is not about depression. That’s another story. This is about you out
there, battling with your own brain. You’re not depressed. You’re just
trying to be a better person. They tell you to be
mindful, aware, positive, appreciative: all good stuff, without
question, but life isn't like that.

More to the point, you’re not like
that. Sure, part of you is at least a little of all those yummy things,
and sometimes you’re zippeddy-pip with life and the
universe. Sometimes you can go for months without losing a single sock
in the laundry.

Yet
there are periods when life all goes nasty, like a wet toothbrush
falling into the cobwebs down there behind the sink, beyond where your
cleaning powers go.

Oh
goody. My toothbrush is full of other people's cruddy putrid waste,
several species of insect larvae and oh, splendid, a black bic biro top
covered in hair.

Inside
you want to scream and wail and give out to the Lord of the Dance, but
hang on, you’re meant to be all calm and see it for what it is. It’s
just a dirty toothbrush. A mere peccadillo in the
universal order of things.

So how do you react? Can you react in a positive way?

No,
you can’t and you shouldn’t even try, because you’re not built all
mindful and positive. You are human. You're just a unique beautiful
bloody ridiculous human. As a human you are part of a species
blessed with this colyoom’s old favourite: The Four Effs Of Humanity:

We are Fallible; Freaked Out; Fucked Up and Fantastic.

‘Fallible’,
obviously, in that we all make mistakes. Freaked Out’, in that it’s a
very rare person, or more accurately a liar, who purports never to have
been scared by this perilous journey of
life. ‘Fucked Up’, simply because we all have families. Nuff said
there, and ‘Fantastic’ because yes, we are, we’re blooming amazing. We
are generous, loving, caring and sympathetic. Hell, we even went the
extra mile and became empathetic. We plan surprise
birthday parties and laugh and cry at adverts on the tele and yes,
we’re just absolutely Fantastic, with a capital F; but we are not
perfect.

Surely
it’s the contrast with sad that makes happy so great? However trite
that might sound, a good amount of awareness seems to have been washed
away by the tidal wave of Mindfulness going on.
Nothing against it. In fact I think it’s terrific. I love Tai Chi and
Yoga and Meditation and anything that brings you Peace and Joy with even
more Capital Letters.

Yet
by focusing on your aspirations for positive enlightenment, you’re
ignoring the mental elephant in the room, which is never a good idea.
Ignored elephants are notorious for causing crazy damage
to your brainbox.

We
are fallible, so we’re going to make mistakes. We’re also probably
going to hate someone. We’re going to feel gut-squeezingly terrified by a
challenge. At some point in our lives, we’ll feel
absolutely bewilderingly confused.

We
have evolved over millennia to feel a vast range of emotions, so why do
we now choose to avoid them? I’m not suggesting that we ignore all
curative therapy. I’m just saying that maybe it’s vital
to feel sad and blue. On a rare day, a little bit of hopeless is okay.

There’s
a reason that constant 100% Positive Thinking doesn’t come naturally to
us humans. It creates conflict by its own insisting existence. Life is
not all good. Alongside all the jolly fun in
the sun custard cream stuff, each of us is constructed with differing amounts of anxiety, fear, dark moods and depressive tendencies.

How
self-aware can you be if you seek to ignore who you are, by refusing to
acknowledge several vital facets of your own make up? How mindful is it
possible to be if you deny what is an intrinsic
part of you?

Surely,
if we’re going fulfil our potential as sentient human beings, it’s best
to know what we’re made of and accept it. We need to stop trying to
cure ourselves of simply being ourselves.